Obviously, the week we say goodbye to a beloved show, it’s going to feature in the image…
The Righteous Gemstones leads us off this week, naturally, with its series finale. “That the Man of God May Be Complete” very much felt like what we should have expected from a series finale. The remaining threads from this season are resolved, many of them relatively early on… except one final twist to the story that’s been running all season, which, naturally, comes to a potentially lethal head for the Gemstones as the result of them trying to do the right thing.
They get through it, of course, and in a way that really ties the season– and the entire family history– together. The episode is a fitting finale, as for most of its run, we get the siblings showing what they’ve learned from their experiences and rising up to be better people, while also putting a bow on their particular storylines. This is also hilarious throughout, with most of the best lines involving Jesse and Eli. And then it all comes home at the end. I’ll miss the show, but as far as finales go, this was about what I expected and about as good as it could have been– the trials and tribulations of the season being resolved and put behind us, with the characters showing some growth and lessons learned along the way and putting those to use, and with some hope for the future, an optimistic note. The show, on the whole, was still about finding grace and mercy and seeking redemption and forgiveness, while being incredibly funny and specific along the way. It was a rare gem of TV.
The Rehearsal takes us to even more bizarre places with “Pilot’s Code,” which involves another one of Nathan’s re-creations (in this case, the particularly bizarre attempt to re-create the upbringing for a cloned dog), which leads into nature vs. nurture, Sully Sullenberger, some preposterously surreal experiments by Nathan, and Evanescence. I don’t know what more to say without getting into the specifics, and those will be more fun for you to see for yourself if you haven’t. Always a fascinating show.
Hacks gives us “Mrs. Table,” where Ava suffers one indignity after another until she’s finally pushed to her breaking point. Deborah, to her credit– eventually– realizes how far Ava has been pushed and makes her own effort to bring her back in, although Ava, with good reason, is a bit wary. Really strong episode that could be at points a little difficult to watch, as Ava is really put through the wringer here and it gets emotionally fraught– but it’s a strong episode with great work by Hannah Einbinder going through everything that happens to Ava this episode. I’d say more, but I don’t really want to just start recapping episodes here.
Elsbeth also brought us its season finale with “Ramen Holiday.” Elsbeth’s brief time in prison (due to a vindictive judge) leads her, naturally, to be incarcerated alongside a number of the people she’s put away while they await trial. We get no fewer than eight returning guest stars– Stephen Moyer, Elizabeth Lail, Retta, Alyssa Milano, Gina Gershon, Arian Moayed, Mary Louise-Parker, and Andre de Shields all return as inmates. (I wasn’t going to write them all out, but then I found somewhere I could copy and paste the list from.) We also get Donna Lynne Champlin guesting as the warden– and, of course, it’s not an Elsbeth episode without a murder! Fun way to close the season, and to send off Carra Patterson, who’s going to be moving to guest status for season 3.
The Great North this week gave us “Dungeon Aunt Dragons Adventure,” wherein Aunt Dirt is part of Moon’s D&D group with his friends. One day, they decide to get a little session in at lunch (and Dirt isn’t around, even though she usually works as a lunch lady), so they play without her… and she is pissed. She seems to take spite and revenge very seriously. This leads Moon and the others (including the sublimely dopey Russell, who gets mention solely for that fact) to try to find out what exactly the source of these bad feelings are and how they can resolve them. And meanwhile, Beef and the rest of the Tobins become obsessed with beadcraft.
And I actually saw this week’s Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney nearly live– putting it on about an hour after it finished. “Real ID” wasn’t one of my favorite episodes, but even a lesser episode of Everybody’s Live still has some hilarious moments (Mulaney and Andy Samberg reading the fanfic script was a riot). This doesn’t mean I’m caught up, though– I still have some older episodes I haven’t seen.
The Studio – We finally got to episode 6, “The Pediatric Oncologist.” Matt is dating a doctor and goes to a charity fundraiser as her date… ego clashes abound.
I did see last week’s Hacks, and for all the struggles between Deborah and Ava and trying to dig out of their ratings hole in “Clickable Face,” the real dilemma isn’t between art and commerce so much as that both are chasing outside validation rather than making the show they want to make. Another good episode in another good season.
I decided to check out the first episode of The Four Seasons and it was pretty solid. Not a laugh riot, but, you know, some good character comedy, although it certainly seems like it’ll fall more in the dramedy category.
Still two episodes behind on The Studio. We’re almost caught up to Everybody’s Live, with only one back episode remaining.
I have faint memories of watching a few Happy Endings episodes. I also remember watching a compilation of some Norm Macdonald “Weekend Update” bits I have on hand. And last night we unwound with a few Bob’s Burgers, as well as The Simpsons‘ “The Front.” I didn’t notice before that if you look closely you can catch a couple of the other trophies Homer wins at the high school reunion– I saw one for “Lowest Paying Job.” I also get a kick out of the Stephen J. Cannell Productions card at the end of the Itchy & Scratchy episode. This one feels pretty clear that they didn’t have enough for a full episode and had to pad it in a few ways. The repeat footage of the Harvard writer is one way; the gags about reusing animation go on long enough to probably qualify. “The Adventures of Ned Flanders” is an even more blatant example. But I also feel like this episode has a lot of gags the writers just really liked, even if they don’t particularly connect to anything. Now, I like the episode because I like those gags, but it’s also hard not to notice the seams in this one.
We say farewell to The Righteous Gemstones for good. Elsbeth‘s season ends but it will return in the fall.
Nothing new this week.
You know what to do in the comments.
About the writer
Captain Nath
Born on the bayou, thriving in the mountains. Writer, gambler, comedian, singer-songwriter, bon vivant, globetrotter, and all-around Renaissance Man with perfect opinions about TV and music. Pronounced with a long A and with the H.
It's a gaming ship.
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Department of
Conversation
Hacks, “Mrs. Table”
Agreed with all your points here, especially re: Einbinder’s excellent work in making Ava’s horrible day as bleakly excruciating as possible. I’d be hurling that fish at the window too. It’s a deft touch that after the awful Ruby interview, she’s so (justifiably) pissed at Deborah and so fundamentally done that she’s over being clever, over being funny: her responses to Deb in that conversation are pure blunt, repetitive rage.
Their eventual (delicate) reconciliation is lovely, and it actually wound up reminding me a little of Quiz Lady‘s idea of “don’t try to control an uncertain outcome, just focus on what you want to remember.” No matter what they do, they can’t guarantee that their show will be #1 and save late night forever, but they can focus on making the show as good and meaningful by their own standards as they possibly can.
Comedic highlight: a tie between Ava’s fury at people ordering branzino to go when it doesn’t even travel well and Kayla’s “I’m sorry, Jimmy, but statistically, at this point, we’re looking for a body!”
Poker Face, “The Game Is a Foot,” “Last Looks,” and “Whack-A-Mole”
I really loved most of season one’s standalone mysteries and thought the show only fumbled the ball when it came to its more serialized conclusion, so I’m baffled to report that my reaction to S2 is, thus far, the opposite. First, the two (relative) duds:
“The Game Is a Foot” has some fun plotting, with Cynthia Erivo’s Amber forced into a lot of unavoidable, split-second criminal improvising–sometimes her solutions are about as good as they can be in the moment, but it’s excruciatingly clear that they won’t hold water for very long. The first post-murder spanner in the works is particularly fun in that regard. But I don’t think Erivo was the best pick for the sextuplets, because while she’s good at the lower-key Delia, she’s less convincing as the more broadly drawn sisters; she’s just not hammy enough to play a fun ham. The script is too cartoonish to help her there. It’s going for camp, but camp that falls flat can be dire.
“Last Looks” annoyed me with a pointless swerve into a subjective camera-view, where we “see” where Charlie is being held only to then have it actually be a different place; I had to rewind to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Nope, it’s just that the first version was the show deciding out of nowhere to give us Charlie’s idea of where she was before revealing the truth. Anyway, Giancarlo Esposito is good as the controlling, pissily unhappy funeral home owner who genteelly domineers his much-younger wife, Katie Holmes, but his last-minute turn into mustache-twirling sadism felt forced.
But “Whack-A-Mole,” which resolves Charlie being on the run by bringing her face-to-face with mob boss Rhea Perlman, is a lot of fun! “The Game Is A Foot” treated the mob goons after Charlie as a kind of inept punchline, with them just showing up at odd intervals to shoot at her, miss, and force her to move on; they lacked either the menace or the grounding of Benjamin Bratt in S1 (we generally knew how Bratt found her, and he didn’t seem this bad at his job). So I wasn’t looking forward to a whole mob episode, but it turned out to be funny and cleverly plotted, with an especially great guest star performance from John Mulaney. The show also does a neat twist on its usual structure here, reversing the POV order of the events so we get Charlie’s less-informed version first before seeing everything the FBI has going on.
Agreed with you and Nath on this week’s Hacks, especially it being almost unbearable to watch at points. This is where they finally pay off your observation from the start of the season that Ava doesn’t quite have the social skills to pull off what she’s doing; when she finds out about the group chat, we finally see the ‘real’ Ava with all the manipulation peeled off, focused entirely on the task at hand and almost being 100% practical, but that then boiling over into uncontrollable rage – the most difficult part being when Einbinder and Ava alike completely let loose and scream with every bit of energy she has.
The scene of her and Deb reconciling (again) was great; it played like a romantic scene, almost beat for beat, which I think goes to show how much platonic relationships have in common with romantic (I was filled with dread when Barry was in trouble, not just because he genuinely might be killed, but because there was a non-zero chance Ava had deliberately caused it to hurt Deb right back). But honestly, this show’s darkness has been overstated – every time they go through the wringer, they’re able to reconcile slightly better than before. It’s a complicated relationship.
Loose notes: I miss Marcus, but the show has successfully cut out all extraneous parts at this point. I love that Deb and DJ have actually formed a real relationship. The first shot of Ava post-makeover is so fucking funny. The staging of Deb double-taking at Ava’s makeover is fantastic; she has a real reason not to be immediately looking at her. The couple are so funny for using therapy-speak to break up with Ava, but in a sincere way rather than a manipulative one.
Went back to a couple episodes of This Fool which I had last seen a long while ago as part of a performance by Chris Estrada. The show was a ton of fun to watch in a crowd (and Estrada was incredibly funny) and I wondered if the show had the same juice at home. As I suspected, it was still funny, even occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, though comedy viewed in a crowd can’t be beat. Estrada plays a mild-mannered nerd in south LA. When his gangbanger cousin Luis comes to live at home again after a long stint in prison, Chris tries to acclimate him to the outside world again though his non-profit Hugs for Thugs. Luis is less interested in making cupcakes than proving his tough guy bona fides, though he’s having trouble adjusting to middle-age. The funniest episode (and the one that introduced me to the series) is the second, where Luis has a run-in with an old rival and attempts to get his boys back together for a fight, only to discover they’re all getting way too old (or dead, due to unexpectedly banal circumstances) for this. Alternating silly and deadpan, it’s not quite as good as an evening with Estrada himself, but pretty funny.
Fuck, I left off Andor.